When covid gives you too much time for trackday prep!

What else are you supposed to do when told to stay at home and can’t ride your bike???

Ha, a beautiful sight to behold especially for this sight lately. The right tools and the skills to make things happen. Nice break from mirrors and tank bags. Excellent work sir. Take note folks, this is called "self reliance". Developing the skill sets to break away from the mother ship.

Good to see the board slowly getting back some decent stuff yeah unlike the "saddle bag, mirror and just got my first ducati" threads.

Haha thanks! I have to say compared to the other Japanese bike engines I’ve built in the past where the manuals are very well explained, working on this engine was a bit like shooting in the dark. But once you get your head around the architecture of the motor its a beautiful piece of engineering!!

On my 2nd build now. My tool kit didnt come with instruction but it did come with a practice motor so it was a learning process but you are correct, once you get the process down, its pretty slick, Again nice work and thanks for sharing.

Thanks! I took the cylinder heads to an ex F1 engineer based near brixworth in the U.K. to reverse engineer the exhaust valve guides as mine were a bit worn out and replacements from Ducati are only oversized and £150 each!!!!! £200 later he made 4 new guides, fitted them and resurfaced the valve seats for a job well done! So a massive endorsement to Simon Armstrong at Ultimate performance if you need head work done in the U.K.

Very cool. I almost want something to happen to my engine so I have an excuse to go through the whole thing like that, would be really fun. But so far 24k hard road miles and multiple A group track days, she still runs beautifully.

Did something happen to yours, or were you just bored?

Yes! Did you check the cam timing before you disassembled it? What head gaskets are those? And where did you put the cams? Great job!

Nah it was running fine just after 3 seasons of trackdays and racing I decided to give it a refresh as I have more time on my hands than I can deal with at the moment! So I renewed all the bearings and rings and changed the exhaust valve guides as those were pretty worn out too compared to the intake guides. I checked timing before and after it was reassembled and tbh it was still within 1degree of factory spec so very impressive from a durability point of view. Over all its had about 17000miles total with the most recent 8000miles hard track use! And to add those are the standard head gaskets! I’ve just left the cam timing to the spec noted in the manual tbh so basically standard. Perhaps next season I may look to fit Ducati corse cams!

Why does this FOG .... question cam timing when he has no business even asking these questions?

Think the question popped up while back FOG- ....... old guy

"Smoked" too much meth

DumpsterFirePani said:

Yes! Did you check the cam timing before you disassembled it? What head gaskets are those? And where did you put the cams? Great job!

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Oh thanks!

What was the factory intake spec?

And how much to rent the dual dial indicator set up?

These are just standard cams so I think the intake lift was 16mm and I believe it’s supposed to open 19degrees BTDC. It was quite expensive the tool. I think around £300 and the dial indicators I had already from some mitutoyo dial bore gauge sets I had as I use a digital dial indicator when I use the bore gauges! T

The valve adjustment kit is part of the Ducati took set. The dial indicators are listed as a “not included” item in the main kit but my kit did come with them. You can order the kit from Ducati but I would order the dial indicators from somewhere else as you will pay through the nose if it’s got a Duc part number. Any Starrett, Mitutoyo or Brown&Sharpe unit will work provided it’s configuration is the similar.

Deanopilot, I have an extra set of RS cams (new) as well as all the other RS pieces. PM me if at some point you decide to investigate that option.

Yes I think i will do at some point! I’ll be running the engine as is for a little bit so if in the not too distant future you still have them I might enquire about it!

Great work man!

1mm of lift at 19° before is just a spec from the cam card. The method that most accurately shows where the camshaft is in relation to the crank is the centerline method

You said it was off by one degree. First of all the degree wheel you are using is very small. If you got one that was twice as big it would be five times as accurate. But let’s go with your off by 1°. I’ll guess it’s ........ from chain stretch? At 1mm lift you are at 18° btdc? If you check the 1mm from closing number too (abdc) and add those 2 together, plus 180 for the intake stroke (that total is your duration at 1mm lift)(which should match what is on the cam card), then divide that number by 2 and subtract out the opening number you find the cam centerline.
Example 18+58+180=256 (duration at 040)
256/2=128
128-18=110°
The 110 number is where the centerline of that intake lobe would be in relation to the crank. If stock is 104° the cam would be 6° ......... I don’t know your opening n closing numbers that is just an example of how what looks like off by 1° at the opening is really a cam that is 6° ........

I was checking both the numbers to see if they tallied with this spec given by Ducati. I understand the method you’re saying but I was just checking to see if they matched this spec from the manual. You can see they state when it gives 1mm lift opening and 1mm lift closing. You have to use these numbers given in the manual if checking standard timing because the opening and closing cam lobe shape is not symmetrical. Calculating the theoretical centreline isn’t useful for anything on this design of cam lobe because it doesn’t correlate to the point of maximum lift. I’m not quite sure what exactly you’re referring to in the last part of your comment. Where did you get the stock figure of 104 degrees? Regarding the size of the wheel and accuracy that’s incorrect. The wheel will show as accurately 1degree of rotation as much as a larger wheel will assuming its been graded accurately. At the end of the Day one degree is one degree. What a larger wheel will show is more resolution of the measurement. So you may be able make out how many minutes of rotation within each degree the crankshaft is rotating(assuming you can even move the crank that smoothly and accurately).

So what method do you think is the best for timing a non symmetrically ground camshaft? I understand your point and know that it’s not truly the center of the lobe

I have a large wheel and ground my pointer sharp as a needle. Don’t know about minutes but yeah you can guesstimate tenths. Without being able to do that I don’t know how you would even get the wheel accurately mounted

Perhaps I didn’t understand what exactly you were saying in your previous post. If you were trying to adjust the timing away from standard values rather and just check to see if they are corresponding to the set values in the manual you would calculate the ‘centreline’ to give you a reference from where you can adjust accordingly. But if the opening and closing values still correlate to with in the spec quoted then it’s the same thing as calculating the centreline. Ducati don’t give a reference in the manual where the centreline should be with respect to crank angle. Just opening and closing angles with 1mm of lift. I wasn’t adjusting them away from standard. I had literally taken the cams out and put them back in when assembling the engine and checked to see if the quoted lift values corresponded to the specified degrees of crank rotation. As Ducati only quote to the nearest whole degree and that I can resolve to the nearest whole degree on my wheel that’s enough for me to do the job correctly. They even give a 3 degree tolerance anyway. Obviously I’d love the timing to be exact to the degree. But there could be many components that contribute to the timing not being accurate and I’m not going to change the entire valve train for the sake of a degree as I’m still limited to some sort of budget.